Hands on: Bing gains Silverlight-only Visual Search feature

Microsoft has given Bing a new Visual Search feature. Although it's only in …

Microsoft today launched the first major new feature since the debut of the company's decision engine in May 2009. The software giant releases updates to its Web search almost every spring and fall, and this season is no exception. Visual Search beta is the first of many updates that Bing will be getting this fall, and it's also easily the most fun to use. Redmond says it created the feature so that users can refine a query visually, clicking instead of typing.

As has come to be expected from Bing, the feature is full of filters that allow the user to sift through lots of data very quickly. Visual Search has thousands of search queries precategorized into a handful of galleries, and presents the information in a way that is very visually appealing.

So, what's the catch? There are two, and their impact on you depends on your level of hate for add-ons (or lack thereof) and your current country of residence.

Requirements

There's no way around it: Visual Search beta requires Silverlight 3.0, a cross-browser plugin that integrates multimedia, graphics, animations, and interactivity into a single runtime environment. We have nothing against Silverlight; in fact, we see it as a formidable competitor to Flash. We do, however, have a problem with prompts that pop up in your face and stop you from using a service until you decide whether or not you want to install a given add-on. This isn't a good idea: there are less obtrusive ways to inform the user that they can't use a feature without downloading software like Silverlight. Here's a screenshot of what Microsoft throws in your face if you try to access Bing's new feature and you don't have Silverlight installed:

Before the Silverlight-haters get too ahead of themselves, we need to emphasize that this prompt, while annoying, will only be shown if you specifically click the Visual Search link located on the left hand side of the website. The rest of Bing can be used perfectly fine without Visual Search or Silverlight. Furthermore, Silverlight penetration is ramping up very quickly thanks to Windows Live Essentials and OEM bundling deals. Nevertheless, we went out of our way to find a computer that didn't have the add-on installed so that we could see if Microsoft had changed the prompt since we first saw it during testing. Nope.

Despite the Silverlight requirement, we feel it's important to note that the feature performed as expected in every major browser we tested. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all displayed the same experience without any unexpected hiccups.

The second annoyance is one that we have discussed before when it comes to Bing. There are many features that are US-only, even if they really shouldn't be. Visual Search is unfortunately one of them. Sure, some of the galleries are quite obviously specific to the US, but the larger majority are not. Silverlight isn't a technology that is limited to the US, and thus this feature should not be limited to the US market.

If you do not reside within the US, make sure to click your language in the top right corner of Bing and set it to United States-English. This might not seem as the end of the world at first, as the workaround to this irritation is so easy, but since Bing likes to reset your location to the one it detects based on your IP, non-US users have to frequently switch back in order to get many features they should be getting regardless.

Hands on

Now that we've talked about what you may have to do to use this feature, we'll move on to more details of the feature, and our thoughts on it. Visual Search beta is only available on certain search results: it's an option that you'll only see on a fraction of your searches. This is because there are a limited amount of Visual Search Galleries, since Microsoft has to compile them manually. The data sources for each gallery (often MSN), including the Structured Content and the images, can be found at the bottom right hand corner of the specific gallery page. At launch today, Microsoft says it has 49 galleries ready, but the software giant insists this is a growing number. Here they are, split into five groups:

Although 49 is a very small number, thankfully these galleries encompass a lot more than just one query because they are such broad groupings. That said, the dataset is still limited and we will need to watch closely at what pace Microsoft continues to add new galleries as well as add to the current ones.

The demonstration video that Microsoft sent over to us wasn't very good: it was filmed with a camera pointed at a laptop instead of video screen capture software. We've whipped up a quick demo video for you in case you want to see it before you try it yourself:

When we played around with the beta, one thing we made sure to try is changing our screen resolution to see how the Silverlight application scaled. It worked surprisingly well, and the animations were smooth and seamless regardless of what we used.

One thing we didn't like, however, was that the scrollbar started at the bottom in certain cases (usually when the gallery was first opened), and the user has scroll up instead of down. This functionality reverts to the scrollbar starting at the top once the user start to apply filters. We found this to be a poor UI decision and we voiced our concern to the Bing team. They took the feedback, but haven't yet made any changes, though we're hopeful, and we'll reluctantly blame this on the beta tag for now.

Overall, we have to say that Visual Search makes searching slightly more… pleasant. When you stumble on a Visual Gallery, you no longer have to retype your query every five seconds to examine a broad set of search results. Assuming that Microsoft continues to add galleries at a rapid rate, we see this as becoming a feature that clearly distinguishes Bing from Google, in a good way.